Necrosis
by Oreithyia
Summary: In the isolation, a realization occurs that results in the deliberate death of the old before the initiation of the new. Ulquiorra was always aware of this fact. It was Orihime who had yet to learn. Ulquihime. Darkfic.


Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, or anything associated with it whatsoever. Alas, and woe.

Necrosis

Hueco Mundo. Hollow World. Hollow.

_Hollow._

Nothingness. The emptiness, a void of anything at all stretching endlessly in all directions, the horizons only an illusion of finality. The nothingness was total, complete, and perfect. It had no barriers or limits.

There was no blowing wind, no whispering breeze to show the golden sun warmed the air that brushed against one's skin. Winds that combed through fields thick with swaying grasses in rich greens, that carried the scents of a rainbow of flowers and fruits, of chocolate colored dirt and sparkling summer rain, of savory food and beloved friends. Nothing to carry the sounds of life; of rushing, of arguing, of laughing or of crying.

It didn't matter though. There was no grass, no flowers, no soil, no friends. There wasn't even a sun, but the dead didn't need one. There was no life. Just the moon, inverted, white against black hovering over colorless sand.

A void. No movement, no sound, nothing to feel. An eternal expanse of lifeless, soulless grey. Empty. Or so it had been.

"Rukia-san!"

Her hands were numb and her arms ached in both muscle and joint. She had pounded on the door of her cell as hard and as long as she could, until her hands were nearly raw, sensation abandoning them, and her exhausted arms ached from the ceaseless pounding. Her voice hurt worse, chaffed and torn from shrieking, begging and pleading to be released, to be allowed to run after the fading reiatsu that was dissolving into the nothingness.

"Let me out!"

Warm, wet. Motion flowing along cheeks throbbing with the agony contorting her face. The feel of the tears was the most she had felt in the emptiness since arriving.

She threw her small frame against the door, white cloth colliding against unyielding grey stone. The soft slippers on her feet lost purchase and she slammed into the floor. Heaving in her efforts to breathe the empty air, she pulled herself up, and shuffled towards the bench placed against the featureless wall.

She collapsed onto it, extending her senses to confirm what she felt. She could not detect Rukia's reiatsu. Chad's was minimal, miniscule even, but definitely there, battered but robust and entrenched. But she could not feel the cool focus and resolute flow of energy that belonged to Rukia.

The ribbons of life she had felt flowing towards as her friends came were being tattered and annihilated one by one.

She slowed her breathing, consciously paying attention to the movements of empty air in and out of her aching lungs. She held her breath for a moment, her single heartbeat thunderously loud in the void.

The door to her cell clicked open. Light filtered in to the grey jail, onto a white uniform and vivid orange hair.

Her eyes stung too much to open them. She directed her senses towards the door, finding firmness. Solidness. An anchor. Unshakable and strong in her mind. Ulquiorra. He knew she knew he was there. She was becoming very attuned to him.

The presence moved into her room, steady and calming. He stopped a respectful distance from her, and she knew he was watching and observing her.

"There is no purpose in distressing yourself in this manner, woman." His voice was innately soothing, deep and cool, like a spring hidden in the shadows of a forest sanctuary. His tone was neutral, but the reprimand in it was detectable. He didn't want her to hurt herself.

"I can't sit by quietly." Her whisper was raw, but adamant. "They are going through this for me."

"We have discussed this before." His tone had not changed, yet the sound dispelled the void, relieving the pressure weighing heavily on her chest somewhat. "You made your feelings on the topic unmistakable."

"I won't stop caring for them." She opened tired eyes, reddened from her tears, dark eyelashes wetly clumped together. She looked at the pale Espada standing in her room, his hands casually in his pockets as always. His face revealed nothing to her about his thoughts, but it was hard not to look, not when that vivid green was there, almost painfully vibrant in the emptiness.

He couldn't understand her, though he was clearly trying. This was the only life he knew after all.

"Why do you serve Aizen-sama?" she asked, her tongue and lips barely moving.

To her surprise, his stoic expression lit up. A small smile came to his dark lips, and his green eyes warmed. Inwardly, she marveled in a way she had not since she had shut down her emotions to survive in this world, numb to her circumstances.

"Aizen-sama freed us," he explained, his sincerity and gratitude honest and unashamed. "He has built a world for us where we can be safe from shinigami and live our own way. In return, he asks only for loyalty." He never shifted his gaze from her.

Orihime blinked in shock, her mouth working soundlessly. She detected the tiny shift in his expression that said he was amused with her. Ashamed for reasons she couldn't explain, her eyes flicked to the blank floor beneath her slippers.

…_Unexpectedly, it suits you._ He had said about how she looked in her uniform. He had teased her good-naturedly about it. _Don't make such a rukus every time, it's annoying._ He had distracted her from her worries with light-hearted words. Had he even been trying to make her smile?

"I don't belong here," she whispered, the hand in her lap clenching into a small fist.

"You do." The counter was automatic and with utmost certainty. "You are one of us."

His presence, his voice, his face. It made the hollowness so much worse when he was gone; highlighted what was missing.

"There were so many things I wanted to do." She wasn't bitter, but the remorse felt so. "So many things I can never do now."

"Such as?" He was curious.

"Well," she began softly, inhaling sharply through her nose and exhaling through her mouth. "I wanted to be a chef, to cook for others. I wanted to be a teacher showing kids how to do things and be an astronaut, seeing what I can't see that's out in space."

It was weird. She could never say these things to Kurosaki except when she thought she would never see him again and knew he could not hear her. She said it to Ulquiorra so easily. She thought back to when she had wanted to kiss Kurosaki good-bye. She hadn't been able to do that anymore than she had been able to speak her mind to him when he was awake. Unconsciously, a slim hand moved from the hard bench to press a dainty finger against her mouth.

She noticed her disarming eyes were watching her fingertip rest against her lower lip. She whipped the hand back to her side and blushed furiously.

His eyes slid smoothly back to hers, though she avoided his gaze. "Something else?" he asked simply.

The scarlet on her cheeks brightened. "I… uh…." She hesitated, blinking rapidly at her predicament. Then she steadied herself. He was always honest with her, why shouldn't she be so with him?

"I never kissed anyone," she murmured, moving her hands to her lap as she absently looked at her short, clean nails. She had wanted it to be Kurosaki, but he never saw her the way she saw him. Was she a fool for still feeling how she did?

Motion and rustle of movement caught her attention. She looked upwards to see the Espada, her steadfast anchor, standing over her, serene as ever.

"This is significant?" Not exactly a question, merely a confirmation.

"Yes, it is," she said, looking down to her hands clasped loosely in her lap. "It's supposed to be with someone you care for deeply. To show how much they mean to you."

"I see."

No judgment, no demands. She looked up again to his face, the vibrant green of his eyes and tear tracks framed by his glossy black hair on one side and the bone white helmet on the other. A dichotomy. He was forever watching her.

Suddenly, something clicked in her mind, startling her. It was like he was watching for something, waiting for something from her. A sign. Her breath caught in her throat and she gasped audibly. She knew why someone watched another that way. Hoping.

The expression on his carved features did not change. In fact, they were frozen like she had never seen, as though he were actively disciplining them into a mask that revealed nothing.

She understood.

"Ulquiorra." She hadn't meant to be so breathy, but it was all she could manage. "Would you kiss me?"

He must have recognized that she had somehow suddenly lost the strength to stand on her own, because two hands capable of crushing a shinigami with little more than thought withdrew themselves from their pockets, and gingerly wrapped around her upper arms to lift her to her feet.

He paused, searching her expression. "If I do this, it will hurt." He waited for her response.

"I don't care." And she didn't. Being in pain in order to show another her affection was meaningless. She'd suffer as much as she had to.

He tilted his head towards hers, dark hair sweeping forward, and halted until he saw her lift her face up to meet him, before lowering his mouth to press firmly against hers.

His breath was warmer than she expected. She had thought he would be cold, but he was definitely warm. She had a moment to reflect his lips, though not oddly colored, black just like his hair, were odd in texture, catching like the skin of a garden snake she had held as a little girl. They didn't feel like her own.

Warm, confident pressure that made her stomach clench and squirm oddly. And then pain. A burning, the feel of charring, of acid seeping against her mouth. The pain spread like the roots of a plant into her tender lips, already chapped and cracked with neglect and stress.

She gasped in surprise, willing herself not to pull back away from the hands steadying her on her arms. She wouldn't reject him now. Yet she couldn't completely suppress the self-defense mechanism that had her moving her mouth and face upwards to get away from the searing and arcing of pain. He moved with her, adjusting his stance to keep his lips to hers, never forcing or leading; only following.

Liquid pain found a deep crack in the burning of the corner of her blistering mouth, and she gasped sharply. Taking the moment of opening, his tongue whipped past her trembling lips, following the gasp to touch her own soft tongue.

The lightening bolt of pain exploding in her sensitive mouth, blistering screaming nerves, overran her fervent wish to stay close to him. She broke away and he readily released her.

Orihime bent double and spat at the floor, her mouth surging with saliva as it fought the venomous effects. Her eyes went wide as she noticed her scarlet blood and ribbons of black in the shiny splat on the smooth, featureless floor. Her lips burned and seared uncontrollably. She grimaced in pain she could no longer ignore as it spread inexorably into her suffering mouth. Reflexively, she gingerly touched her hand to her to her painful lips. Her eyes shot open as she saw charred black skin flutter in ashen flakes to the floor or slough onto her fingers as bloodied clots.

She gasped in horror at the realization and as more blistering pain began to move like the fierce heat of flickering flames to her blood slicked hand. She jerked up to brush her hand on her snowy uniform when a much stronger hand caught her wrist in a gentle hold.

Ulquiorra brought one lengthy coattail around to carefully clean her endangered hand, then efficiently wipe her charred and bleeding lips, causing her to shut her eyes tightly in pain and put all her concentration into remaining still as the cloth swiped against raw nerve endings.

"Heal yourself."

Her hands instantly went to the pale blue hairpins at her temples. Her eyes opened in surprised realization as the warm glow of orange light filled her vision. This was the first time she had healed herself this way. She was always looking to heal others.

Through the orange transparency of the barrier, she saw Ulquiorra cleaning his face and jaw, her blood and the odd black liquid on his pale face in smears like brushed paint. He paused suddenly, his eyes looking up with a distant gaze. He must have received a message.

"I must go," he informed her simply, walking towards the door using his confident, unhurried gait.

She inhaled through her still burning lips. "Ulquiorra." He turned to her. He always gave her his attention. "I would like to kiss you again." She flushed madly at her audacity, but she refused to be cowed by her own feelings.

The features of his marble face changed again in the subtle way she had learned to read, but there was something else in it this time that made her feel as though she need to sit down before she feel down.

"Ah."

* * *

AN: Many thank you's to the people who maintain the Ulquihime group at Crunchy Roll. I found it to be an invaluable resource, particularly the manga analysis and relevant episodes.

I'm one sick puppy, I guess. I am a huge fan of this pairing and have wanted to delve into writing Ulquihime for a while, but I have found it difficult to come up with anything other than a darkfic without my suspension of disbelief deciding to revolt with extreme prejudice. I plan to write more with these two, so feedback on what you, my readers and fellow shippers, think would be very greatly appreciated.

Your authoress,

Oreithyia


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